74 ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN ENGLAND, 



aggrandisement of the monks by the impropriation of tithes, 

 led to acts of savage brutality, the counterpart in coarse 

 natures of that gross licentiousness 1 which characterised the 

 conduct of the wealthier classes. 



On the other hand, the ordinary peacefulness of the country, 

 and its growth in opulence, are shown by the general use of 

 the new material, brick, in the construction of dwelling-houses, 

 and the abandonment of the stone castle for embattled brick 

 buildings. Country residences were not quite safe from sudden 

 surprise, but private war till the outbreak of the great quarrel 

 was neither a passion nor a risk. The feud of Lords Devon- 

 shire and Bonvile, which is the prelude to the struggle, is 

 noted in the Rolls of Parliament as a scandal which must be 

 put down. Few of these houses remain, but there is a great 

 deal of fifteenth-century brick-building in Cambridge, and I 

 have little doubt that the manor house and farm buildings 

 which Gervase Markham figures at the beginning of the seven- 

 teenth century represent a far older fashion in the more opulent 

 parts of England. The hut of the peasant was doubtless still 

 rude, though not because the materials for a more solid and 

 comfortable structure were out of his reach. 



In the year 1453, tne Commons, during the shortlived gleam 

 of hope which preceded the disasters of Shrewsbury and his 

 son, determined to make another effort for the recovery of 

 some of the French provinces, and granted what in the 

 hands of some English generals a generation or two before 

 would have been a very invincible army. At first they 

 promised the king twenty thousand archers to be levied 

 rateably on the whole of the king's dominions except Wales 

 and Cheshire. The archers were to be equipped and to be 

 paid by the counties at the rate of sixpence a day for six 

 months, provisions and other munitions of war being supplied 

 from other sources. The king, or his advisers, remitted 7000 

 of the number, and the rest were apportioned among the cities 



J See Gascoigne for the licentiousness of dress and speech, and for general irreverence 

 among the upper classes. 



